


Ace of Hearts

by elruesta



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Character Study, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, POV Third Person, Physical Disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elruesta/pseuds/elruesta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann Gottlieb knows he's different from the moment he's born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ace of Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed a severe lack of ace Hermann, so this is my remedy :)

Hermann Gottlieb knows he's different from the moment he's born.

The doctors tell his mother that he'll be lucky to live past five, he'll be lucky if he gets out of a wheelchair or splints, so when he lives to be six, seven, eight, and he's able to walk in his braces and crutches just fine, thank you very much, his mother gets new doctors.

It's not their fault, he knows, he was just born this way, born defective, but what he lacks in physical ability he compensates in mental prowess.

He's a genius, a prodigy. There's isn't another chap on earth with the number savvy of Hermann Gottlieb. He's unique, he's different, and he can feel how different he is when he's being punched square in the face and gut after school in the empty parking lot for refusing to hand over his careful homework to a group of able-bodied boys. He can feel just how one-in-a-million he is when he raises his hand avidly to answer a maths question and he hears snickering behind him because damn, Hermann sure as hell can't walk, so they guess this is all he's good at, being the teacher's pet.

They call him the human calculator. They call him the robot. They ask him if pain registers in his circuits as they kick his crutches out from under him. 

He doesn't tell his sister or his brothers or his father or his mother. Having a disabled sibling or child is hard enough because people stare. People stare pityingly and scornfully, directly and peripherally, expectantly and wondrously. People stare with their mouths open, with their eyes cast sideways, with their heads tilted away. People stare indoors, people stare out, people stare all the time.

Knowing your sibling or child lives through hell inside and out day in and day out is not something through which he wants his family to live. Enough people stare as it is.

He grows up inherently different. He grows up inherently thinking he's broken. So, when all those around him blossom into their teens and go at each other like rabbits, he chalks up his lack of interest in it all to the fact that he's broken, he's a robot, he's a human calculator, and he accepts it like the square root of minus one.

By high school, the teasing somewhat subsides. He grows into a tall, lanky thing with high cheekbones that gather some semblance of handsome. Despite it all, it comes as no surprise when his first girlfriend leaves because he can't get intimate with her. He's broken when word gets out and along with "cripple" and "geek" he's called "prude," which angers him because at least the previous two were true.

He doesn't know what he is, but by 20 he's not so broken anymore because he gets his B.S. in record time, and by 22 his faults are nothing more than small cracks because he's Doctor Hermann Gottlieb, and he has his identity.

He's content, he's ecstatic. Grade and high school are behind him and the taunting evaporates from him like a cold sweat.

He's free, he's not broken, but people still stare like they always have. He hobbles by in a huff and people crane their necks and say with their eyes, "wow, look at that bloke go," as if he's expected to do otherwise, to keel over, to be weak. His legs hurt like hell every bleeding day but he says nothing because he's used to it, he was born different, he grew up different, and he's strong as hell because of it.

He's the mathematician with the cane. He's the scientist with the limp. It's how he's recognized, how he's known, and he'd much rather deal with reactions to his face value than what truly lies in his deck of cards, because he knows how people react to the Ace of Hearts.

"You're just antisocial," is the first reaction, from his first college roommate. Hermann requests a transfer.

"So, what, you reproduce by budding?" is his favorite response, and it comes from several people, one of which being a fellow grad student of his.

"What a waste," comes as a surprise, since he never considered himself much of a looker, but still, he receives this gracious compliment from his younger brother Bastien as Bastien sits with an arm around his girlfriend on their mother's couch at Christmas time. Hermann replies with venomous eyes and a cutting grin.

He expects better, but knows better.

He hides his true self in cheap canes and cheap sweater vests and cheap hair cuts because it's easier that way.

By 24 he's had enough, and that's when the Kaiju attack in their brilliant blue bioluminescence, and that's when the Jaeger project is born.

He works like a dog with top scientists to make it happen, much to his father's chagrin, because giant robots won't do a blasted thing, and giant walls will, apparently, according to Lars Gottlieb.

Hermann works like a dog partly because he's a part of something and for once people are less concerned about his limp and more concerned about what he can contribute. 

People stare at the Kaiju in a way with which he's all too familiar.

Hermann mostly works like a dog because he doesn't know how else to work.

He feels like a soldier, and he is.

He finds it ironic how in war his life gets better. He finds it ironic that the person with whom he corresponds through letters, meets, and loathes, ends up being relocated with him to the Shatterdome, and he finds it ironic when Newton Geiszler grows on him and becomes his friend.

We all build walls, images of ourselves we wish to reflect and impress upon the rest of the world. Newt has his tattoos, Hermann has his doctoral title, but both don't deem their sexualities necessary bricks in that outer wall, which is why when Hermann and Newt first talk about their orientations (long after they work out the other kinks in their friendship), it's as smooth as Hermann writing on the blackboard, as easy as the smile that spreads across Newt's scruffy face.

It's also why when Newt asks Hermann out to dinner and a movie, they go, they have a great time, and Hermann isn't a robot.


End file.
